This image is seriously in focus.

For the last few months I’ve been having a blast with the Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye lens. I wrote about my first impressions of the lens soon after I got it in August last year. I won’t be repeating that here, so you may want to go back to read it. Back then I hadn’t yet used the lens for work, but now after a few months of using the lens on assignments I have a much better idea of how the lens performs. And in short, my conclusion is: it absolutely rocks.

Keep in mind that this isn’t supposed to be a review where I’ll discuss all the technical aspects and features of this lens. For that you’ll have to look elsewhere. I’m just going to give you my personal opinion of this lens after using it for a while.

First of all, the lens is expensive, but I can assure you that it’s worth the money Canon is asking for it. It has quickly become one of my favorite lenses to use. You can get really creative with it and it just never gets boring. I’ve used the lens for a variety of purposes so far, but mostly I’m using it to shoot architecture, panoramic images and aerial shots. I absolutely love the effect this lens gives to aerial shots; it really exaggerates the roundness of the earth. You can see what I mean in some of the sample images in the gallery below.

I think that especially photographers who shoot images for 360 degrees panoramas and virtual tours are going to really love this lens. The reason for this is that the Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye lens allows a photographer to shoot both “low” resolution and high-resolution panoramas at the same time without having to change the camera or the lens. The nodal point of the lens is exactly the same at both 8mm and 15mm. Because of this, shooting at 8mm or 15mm doesn’t require you to recalibrate your setup to make sure that the nodal point is in the correct position. So at 8mm you can shoot a panorama consisting of about 4-6 images (approx. 65MP final resolution on a EOS 7D body), but at 15mm you can shoot a much higher resolution panorama of about 25 images (approx. 240MP final resolution on a EOS 7D body). This gives you the flexibility of shooting both resolutions on location at the same time very easily. You shoot first at 8mm, zoom to 15mm and then shoot again without changing anything else.

The panorama below was shot at 15mm and has a final resolution of approx. 240MP. You can zoom in all the way to view all the details.

The panorama below was shot at 8mm and has a final resolution of approx. 65MP. This was shot shortly after the one above, and all I had to do was move the camera and zoom the lens to 8mm.

When focusing this lens manually, you’ll have to look really carefully to make sure that your subject is in sharp focus. It is really difficult to see through the viewfinder if the lens is focused correctly. Everything pretty much looks in focus most of the time and it can be difficult to see slight changes in focus. I’ve found that using Live View on the camera in the greatest magnification possible to focus gives me the best and most reliable results. You’ll have to double-check your focus especially if you want to set the focus to infinity. Don’t rely on the infinity marker on the distance scale on top of the lens! Even Canon warn you to double-check your focus in the manual that comes with this lens. With autofocus this isn’t an issue.

The bottom line is that I am extremely satisfied with this lens and I can’t recommend it to you highly enough. I think this lens is a real gem in Canon’s assortment of lenses right now, and since it is so unique, it could influence a lot of people to choose a Canon DSLR just to be able to use this lens. When I had to choose which brand of DSLR I would buy 5 years ago, the wide assortment of Canon lenses (along with their lead in image quality at the time) was one of the important things that made me choose Canon. Traditionally Canon has always had the lead in the area of lenses, and this lens just strengthens their position even more. When the Canon EF 200-400 f/4L IS 1.4x (another brilliant design) hits the market later this year it’ll become even more difficult for the competition to catch up.

Canon EOS 1DX

Could 2012 be the year where Canon makes a serious comeback in the professional photography industry? Well, from the looks of it, it’s going to get very exciting for photographers using Canon equipment.

For the last 4 years I’ve been bashing Canon here on my blog for their poor quality control, poor product releases (50D, 5D Mark II, 7D, 60D) and questionable business practices (5D Mark II, 50mm f/1.2L). I’ve also often mentioned how it seemed like Canon was out of touch with the market and didn’t listen to what professionals were asking for. But with the announcement last year of the EOS 1DX, I think I’m starting to see the long awaited change we’ve been asking for.

Continue reading “Thoughts on the Canon EOS 1DX”

Microsoft Flight Sucks!

Back in January 2009 Microsoft shut down ACES Studio, the team at Microsoft who were developing the Flight Simulator game. The announcement came as a surprise to everyone, especially the large community of fans, developers and hardware manufacturers that exists around the Flight Simulator franchise. Why would Microsoft want to shut down the team that’s responsible for arguably one of the most succesful gaming franchises in the history of the personal computer? At the time there was the ongoing economic crisis, and the shut down of ACES Studio was just part of a layoff of around 5000 people at Microsoft. It seemed to me that Microsoft was trying to cut expenses during the economic crisis, but it’s unclear why they would want to shut down such a successful game like Flight Simulator. Back in 2006 when Bill Gates was showing off Windows Vista, Microsoft Flight Simulator X was one of the important games he demoed to show the capabilities of Windows Vista and DirectX 10. Up until today, Microsoft has never given a clear reason as to why exactly they shut down ACES Studio and apparently stopped development of the Flight Simulator game.

Continue reading “Microsoft Flight SUCKS!”

Sunglasses (Model: Carol Chen Poun Joe)

I was hired recently by Art Design to create images for the 2012 calendar for Optiek Ninon and Instyle Optics. Optiek Ninon is an optician in Suriname that sells eyewear and related accessories. Instyle Optics is a special division by Optiek Ninon that focusses on the more exclusive eyewear and related accessories.

Continue reading “Optiek Ninon / Instyle Optics 2012 Calendar Photos”

In search of food

The 2012 calendar for Historex is out featuring six of my macro/micro pictures. Historex is a brand of paint being made by Varossieau Suriname N.V. and is especially suitable for painting buildings in a tropical climate. The design and production of the 2012 calendar was being done by Henna Brunings of Art Design, who hired me to deliver six colorful macro photos for use on the calendar. The theme for the 2012 calendar is “The colours of detail.” In the end a selection was made by the client which included some of my older work as well as more recent pictures. You can see them on the calendar in the image below.

Continue reading “Historex 2012 Calendar Photos”

Crab Spider

It’s amazing how much exists around us that goes unnoticed every day while we go about living our busy lives. Everywhere around us are areas that, when closely focused in on, reveal a whole new world that can sometimes look very alien and different to what we’re used to. One of the things that I’ve learned while doing close-up/macro/micro photography is that once you zoom in on the world of the small, many surprises await you.

Continue reading “Macro & Micro Photography: The World of the Small”

Queen of Sadness

This is the fourth part of my article on Understanding Women. The first part can be found here, the second part here and the third part here. If you haven’t yet read them, I recommend reading them first so that you can better understand the rest of this fourth part.

A lot of what we’ve been taught about the world we live in is simply wrong. Not only is it wrong, but in many cases we’ve been taught to believe the exact opposite of the truth. If you’ve read the previous 3 parts of this article, you already have a good idea about why we’ve been taught these things. Back in 2006 I wrote the following:

The world as we know it today is largely based on deception. Incredible amounts of deception going back even thousands of years. A lot of what I learned in school, for example, was just based on lies. The feeling you get when you start to realize what’s going on is like going crazy, but in reverse. You realize that you’ve really been crazy all your life, believing and accepting all kinds of nonsense as normal, and that now you’re realizing what’s been going on and are becoming a sane person, seeing things as they really are. It’s like growing up with everyone telling you the sky is red, and later finding out the sky is actually blue. Once you find out, you have no choice but to re-evaluate everything you know and view them in a totally new perspective. It’s almost like forgetting everything you know and starting from scratch again.

Continue reading “Understanding Women Part IV”

suriname360 - Visit Suriname from the comfort of your own home!

After many months of hard work I today finally launched suriname360 - a website that features high resolution 360 degrees panoramas and interactive virtual tours of places in Suriname. I’ve had the idea for this website for a few years now but due to other priorities it wasn’t until March of this year that I could start working on this project. And I did so mostly in my free time while also working on other projects for clients of mine (after all, the bills don’t pay themselves ).

Continue reading “Launch of suriname360″

Rainclouds - Picture taken with a Canon EOS 7D and Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye lens (click for larger view)

Ever since Canon announced the EF 8-15mm f/4L fisheye lens back in September 2010 I have been impatiently waiting for it. I knew that, at least in theory, it was going to be awesome and after having it for a few days now, I can say that it’ll blow you away. Whoever came up with the idea for this lens has to be a very brilliant designer. I know it may sound like I’m biased, but I’ve got plenty of negative posts here on my blog about Canon. The most famous are my posts on the EOS 5D Mark II autofocus issues. But with this lens, if I want to be honest, I have no choice but to praise Canon.

The lens is beautiful, extremely well built, feels very solid in your hands, focusing and zooming are very smooth and the image quality is simply awesome. The lens delivers very sharp images all the way to the edges. Even on an APS-C camera like the EOS 60D or EOS 7D you can now get a 180° view in your pictures with a full 180° circular fisheye view on full frame cameras such as the 5D Mark II. You can capture the entire sky with just one image on a full frame camera.

Continue reading “Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye First Impressions”

Timeless Stare

This is the third part of my article on Understanding Women. The first part can be found here and the second part here. If you haven’t yet read them, I recommend reading them first so that you can better understand the rest of this third part.

Humanity has been hijacked. To a very great degree we’ve lost our beautiful women who were both pure at heart and at mind. The kind of women we can now only read about in fantasy stories. This was done on purpose in order to frustrate our lives so that it would be easy to control and manipulate us. Believe it or not, we’ve been like this for thousands of years now. When you do enough research you’ll quickly discover old stories and legends that mention how humanity was deliberately divided in order to control us. There are ancient stories from Africa that mention how a long time ago “gods” came from the sky one day in large silver orbs (reptilian aliens) and how they divided men and women in order to control them. Even in the bible you can read about how Eve was misled by a snake and how as a result life became a lot more difficult for both Adam and Eve. And there are many more examples, but this goes beyond the scope of this post. Check out David Icke’s work for more details on this. Suffice it to say that the issues between men and women go back many thousands of years.

Continue reading “Understanding Women Part III”